Former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty appears before the justice policy committee hearing as he testifies about the power plants the Government axed in Oakville and Mississauga for the 2011 election, at the Ontario Legislature in Toronto, May 7, 2013.

(Chris Young For The Globe and Mail)

Former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty appears before the justice policy committee hearing as he testifies about the power plants the Government axed in Oakville and Mississauga for the 2011 election, at the Ontario Legislature in Toronto, May 7, 2013.

(Chris Young For The Globe and Mail)

McGuinty: I killed the gas plants and didn't know how much it would cost
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Dalton McGuinty has taken
full responsibility for ordering the costly cancellation of two gas-fired power
plants in the Toronto
suburbs, conceding his government was wrong to move forward with the projects
in the first place.

But the former Ontario premier claimed
he had no idea how much it would cost when he pulled the plug and did not know
the price tag would be so high until just weeks ago. And he deflected
responsibility for the decisions from Premier Kathleen Wynne, saying she was
largely in the dark about the file.

Testifying
before a legislative committee, Mr. McGuinty, now a backbencher, was in full
Premier Dad mode. He defended his decision to cancel the plants by evoking the
image of children going to school in the shadow of industrial smokestacks. He
scolded opposition MPPs when they questioned his motives. At one point, he even
made reference to his mother’s home-spun wisdom.

“The cost to move these
plants is higher than anyone would have wanted. Our government’s ability to get
the right numbers out in a timely way has been less than stellar. And we have
struggled to produce documents in a timely way. All of this is true,” he said.
“But I strongly believe locating these gas plants in those communities was
wrong, and relocating them is right.”

The Liberals pulled the
plug on the plants, in Mississauga and Oakville, in the lead-up
to the 2011 election. The move was seen as an electioneering tactic, designed
to quiet local opposition and save Liberal MPPs, in whose ridings the plants
were to be located, from defeat.

The cancellations cost an
estimated $585-million – far more than Mr. McGuinty and his ministers initially
said.

High-ranking officials with
the Ontario Power Authority have told the committee that the government knew
from the start the cancellation costs would be higher. But Mr. McGuinty
insisted he had no inkling of the elevated price tag – to the incredulity of
opposition members, who repeatedly asked him when he knew.

But Mr. McGuinty came as
close as the Liberals have to apologizing for what happened, saying his
government “was wrong” on the plants and should have cancelled them sooner.

“I regret that we did not
locate those plants properly at the outset,” he said. “I regret that it took us
so long to move on these decisions.”

In 2009, for instance,
Queen’s Park enacted new rules governing the location of wind turbines,
mandating they had to be a distance away from homes. At that time, Mr. McGuinty
said, the government should have brought in setbacks for power plants as well.

But NDP MPP Peter Tabuns
questioned Mr. McGuinty’s purportedly altruistic motives, pointing out that he
waited until the dying days of the 2011 election to end the Mississauga project and allowed equally
unpopular plants to move ahead in Tory and New Democrat ridings.

“Why were you listening to
people in Liberal riding and not in opposition-held ridings?” Mr. Tabuns asked.

“It just wasn’t as high an
issue in my mind,” Mr. McGuinty replied.

He said he had initially
believed the Mississauga plant, which was having trouble getting financial
backing, would not actually be built, and saw no reason to cancel it at first.
It was not until the fall of 2011 – when the Liberals were coincidentally in a
tight electoral battle with the Tories – that it became clear the plant would
move forward if the government did not intervene, he said.

The committee hearings come
at a sensitive time for the minority Liberals. They are in the middle of trying
to pass a budget which, if voted down, would trigger an election. While the
opposition has tried to implicate Ms. Wynne in the gas plant cancellations, Mr.
McGuinty said she was never briefed on the file.

Even after Mr. McGuinty
resigned earlier this year and handed power over to the new Premier, he said,
he did not discuss the gas plant issue with her.

He also tried to downplay
the role of his staff, who have been accused of meddling in sensitive talks
over the cancellations. Rather, he said, they were merely keeping the lines of
communication open.

“Some of
the best political advice I got from my mother on my wedding day,” he said.
“That advice is: Whatever happens, keep talking.”

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